9-11

[firenze11]

I was in high school at the time in one of the suburban areas outside Baltimore/DC. I heard about it right before lunch from someone and thought it was a joke. It couldn't possibly be real. I also still feel guilty for laughing at the time, for my disbelief.

After lunch I went up to the foreign language department to do my grading, I was an aide, and found out quickly what had happened. They let me call my Mom, who often works in DC, but the line was busy. At least I knew she was at home. The teachers and I all moved to one of the classrooms to watch the news coverage. I remember the Spanish teacher crying and I remember trying very hard to focus on grading papers but just giving up after awhile. The media/television teacher came running in after awhile. He was so angry. I'd never heard any of my teachers lose it like he did. Apparently he had put televisions out in the library so students could watch the coverage and the principal told him to take them out and that he didn't want any student watching the live coverage. I guess for awhile I was one of the only kids getting any real information.

After that I went to my psych class and shared what I knew with them and we were soon sent home early. When I pulled up into the driveway at home I remember the garage door opening before I stopped the car. My Mom had run down and was crying and we just stood in the driveway hugging and crying. School was closed for a few days after. We put out our American flag. I remember hearing the Lee Greenwood song and getting chills.

Thanks for this thread, it was actually kind of comforting to me to read everyone else's memories.

[LoriO]

I was working the midnight shift as a 911 dispatcher that morning and it was really weird. All morning I felt very tense and on-edge. Just had that something is wrong feeling. I got out of work at 0800 (EST) and I felt so out of sorts, I did something that I almost never do, I went straight to the barn where I kept my horse. For some reason, all I could think about was that I needed to hug my horse... Spent some time at the barn and finally felt better, like this huge weight had lifted off of me.

So I went home and walked in the door just a bit after 0900. A few minutes after I got home the phone rang and it was my husband telling me to turn on the TV. As tired as I was, I was glued to the TV all morning and talking with other people on another bulletin board that I go to Chronicle of the Horse. Many of the people posting there didn't have access to a TV so people like myself were the ones keeping them updated on what happened.

9/11 was a huge blow to both my husband and myself as we are both in Public Safety. We lost too many brothers and sisters that day.

[Mr. Bloom]

I was out of the office when I heard.

When I returned to my office, I remember our investment banker who was visting from Sandler O'Neill (he would have been on the top floor if he wasn't with us) sitting in the conference room with his face in his hands realizing that he had lost ALL his co-workers.

I remember we had a beautiful sunset that night, but the only trails in the sky were from military jets

While we had no personal connection, I remember the story of a young woman from nearby in Corydon Indiana whose office was in the WTC. She called her mom in Corydon to say she loved her. For weeks, her mom held out hope that she was alive somewhere...and the press followed her for weeks as she came to the realization and her hope passed...it was very sad. and I was angered that they made a spectacle of her going through the stages of grief publically

[Velobambina]

I was at work and a coworker heard about it on the radio on her way in. She turned on the TV and we saw the second bldg get hit, then both towers come down. I'll never forget her saying, "it's gone" after the first one went down. After the Pentagon was hit, they decided to evacuate all "non-essentials" (I'm a feddie). Driving home was surreal, as the radio kept saying another plane was headed toward DC, the same direction I was going.

The plane that hit the Pentagon likely flew over my house (we are a couple miles west) and many of the injured were brought to the hospital which is a couple blocks from us. Could hear sirens and helicopters most of the day.

I'm planning to see the new memorial at the Pentagon soon. After dark, when it is lit up.

[RoadRaven]

We even "felt" it in New Zealand...

My sister in law rang us at about 6 in the morning on the 12th of September. I turned the telly on and made the children's school lunches as tears rolled down my cheeks... watching the two towers explode over and over again.

I rarely have the TV on in the morning, so my little children were keen to watch too, and then horrified when they realised what we were seeing.

I was teaching that day and the whole campus was sad and stunned.

New Zealand stopped that day too as our hearts went out to those involved.

[Tri Girl]

This was interesting reading all of your stories of where you were on "that day." It's one that was felt by all the world.

Tuckervill, I watched that History channel documentary. I cried the whole time. It seems so long ago, yet just like yesterday. It still makes me sad to think of all the families who lost loved ones. So sad.


I was teaching 5th graders. A teacher across the hall knocked on my door and told me that the country was under attack and NYC had been hit. I was in the middle of Math, so I just said "um, OK," and went back to teaching. It didn't sink in what she had said until my break when I went to the office and saw the t.v. Parents started withdrawing their kids from school for the day shortly after.

A woman who I worked with lost her son. It was heartbreaking to watch her and her husband go through what they did. His younger brother has since gone into politics to try and make this a better and safer place to live.

[ny biker]

I was living in DC at the time, at the very northern tip of the city near the MD border, and working across the river in Arlington, VA. I was at home getting ready for work with the Weather Channel on in the background, and I heard Mark Mancuso say that "something has happened at the World Trade Center and all the airports in the country are closed." So I went into the bathroom to dry my hair and after a few seconds I thought, wait, what did he just say? So I went back into the living room and turned on CNN. It was only minutes after the plane hit the Pentagon at that point.

They had a reporter live near the Pentagon and it looked like cars were moving on the road behind him so I left for work, on my usual route which goes nowhere near downtown DC or the Pentagon. (At this point I still didn't realize the scope of what was going on.) But I ran into traffic caused by roadwork so it took a long time to get to the office. When I got there, it was deserted. The management had decided it was best to send everyone home.

I tried to call my boss on his cell but couldn't reach him, because as it turns out, you couldn't make any cell phone calls that day (which is why I still pay Verizon for a landline at home). I went into the Holiday Inn next door and asked at the desk if they knew if the federal government had been closed. Since I work on a project for the Postal Service, we usually follow the feds when it comes to closing due to bad weather and stuff. They said it was, so I hung around watching the TV in their lobby for a few minutes and then got in my car to head home.

I knew I couldn't take my usual route because of all the roadwork, so I started off in a different direction. And I sat in traffic, and sat and sat and sat. Until finally I reached an intersection where they told us the road ahead was blocked. I tried another route and the same thing happened. It turned out that all the bridges between DC and Virginia were all lanes outbound. So I pulled over and asked someone who was directing traffic if she knew how I could get home, and she told me to get on the interstate (66) going west, then pick up the beltway north and swing around in a big circle to the area I lived in. I expected traffic on that route to be a mess but actually it was moving fine. Once I exited off the beltway, onto Connecticut Ave which is a major north/south thoroughfare, I was heading south into DC, but traffic going north out of the city was barely moving because so many people were trying to get out of the city to go home.

Once home I was afraid to turn on the tv. I'd had the radio on in the car so I knew what was going on, but I didn't want to see it. To this day, I will not watch any tv footage of it. Eventually I did turn on the tv and watched the news all day. At one point all the members of Congress stood on the steps of the Capital and sang together, at which point I lost it.

Meanwhile...my family lives on Long Island and at the time my father worked in northern New Jersey. My father had to stay with a co-worker overnight because he couldn't get home. My brother-in-law is a volunteer firefighter on Long Island, and he and his FD went into Queens to a staging area. My sister said later that when they left she truly thought she would never see him again. She was busy trying to explain to the kids what was going on.

My brother-in-law's fire department didn't go into Manhattan that day but they did go in the next day to help with the search. Over the next few months he went to a lot of memorial services for firefighters who had died.

I have several cousins who work in contruction in NYC, and one of them worked in lower Manhatten in the days that followed, trying to get utilities working again. He wound up on the local TV news when a reporter saw him get upset with people who were walking around taking pictures like it was some kind of tourist attraction.

Another cousin is a crane operator, and he's currently working on one of the cranes at the Freedom Tower construction site.

I did my first century in 2003, and I decided it would be the NYC Century because I wanted to go back and spend some tourist dollars in the city. Although I'd been to Long Island various times in the previous two years, it was my first trip to the city. I wound up staying in the Marriot Hotel that is right next to Ground Zero, and my room overlooked it.

In the fall of 2001 I did a TNT inline skating race down in Atlanta. The day before the race we had a big luncheon for all the TNT teams that were there. One of the speakers was the coach of the NYC team, who talked about the team members he had lost because they had been in the towers that day, and he also told us about the NYFD chaplain who he had taught to skate after meeting him one day in Central Park. The next day I saw him at the end of the race and took a picture of him.

I also remember the first time I drove past the Pentagon after it happened, which was a month or so later, on my way to a bridal shower. I was so shocked by the big black gaping hole that I almost drove off the road.

My parents are coming to Virginia in a couple of months, so I'm going to see if they want to visit the new memorial when they're here.

I still work at the same job in the same office building, although now I live only four miles away from it in Arlington. We're on the ninth floor of a ten-story building. Last week they draped a giant flag off the roof and it covered the windows near my cube.

I wore a white golf shirt and black pants that day. Never wore them again, because of the memories. Eventually I donated them to Good Will.